Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed.
An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change.
This week
‘Leeway’ for fossil fuels
METHANE EXEMPTION: The European Commission is considering making changes to its flagship methane emissions regulation to give fossil-fuel companies “leeway to avoid penalties…in what would be a major win for the oil and gas sector”, reported Politico. According to new draft government guidelines seen by the outlet, “national authorities would be able to grant exemptions to companies on energy security grounds”. A separate Politico story said the move comes after the Trump administration “has intensified pressure on the regulation”.
GAS EXPANSION: The Guardian reported that the Norwegian government has been “heavily criticised for approving plans to reopen three North Sea gasfields nearly three decades after they were closed”, with the justification of helping to “fill the gap in energy supplies created by the Middle East war”. Oslo has also given its approval for oil and gas companies to explore 70 new locations in the North Sea, Barents Sea and Norwegian Sea, the newspaper added.
RENEWABLES INVESTMENT: The Financial Times reported that investors are “piling into clean-power funds at the fastest pace in five years as the Iran war accelerates a global push for energy security and alternatives to oil and gas, boosting a slew of stocks linked to the transition away from fossil fuels”. It added that more than £3bn has been invested in global funds linked to renewable energy in April, bringing their total net asset value up to $43bn.
Around the world
- SHIPPING TALKS: Nations are “back on track” to adopt a framework for curbing global shipping emissions, following the latest International Maritime Organization’s meeting in London, according to a Carbon Brief Q&A.
- SUPER El NIÑO: Global sea temperatures were the second highest on record for the month of April, “stoking concerns among scientists that an El Niño warming cycle is brewing that would intensify extreme weather”, reported the Financial Times.
- ROUND-THE-CLOCK: An International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) report found that “solar and wind power paired with battery storage systems are already delivering reliable, round-the-clock electricity at a lower cost than fossil fuel-dominated energy systems in a growing number of regions”, said BusinessGreen.
- KENYA FLOODS: At least 18 people have died in floods and landslides driven by heavy rain in Kenya, reported Al Jazeera.
0.15C
The average amount by which trees lower summer temperatures in cities globally, according to research in Nature Communications.
Latest climate research
- Airborne microplastics and nanoplastics have the potential to contribute to warming by absorbing sunlight | Nature Climate Change
- A mega tsunami in Alaska in 2025 was “preconditioned by glacial retreat caused by climate change” | Science
- “Net-zero global power systems meeting universal electricity needs for decent living standards are technically feasible” | Nature Energy
(For more, see Carbon Brief’s in-depth daily summaries of the top climate news stories on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.)
Captured
The UK has avoided the need for gas imports worth £1.7bn since the start of the Iran war, as a result of record electricity generation from wind and solar, according to Carbon Brief analysis. The chart above shows that wind and solar have generated a record 21 terawatt hours (TWh) on the island of Great Britain since the end of February 2026, when the US and Israel first attacked Iran. The record wind and solar output avoided the need to import 41TWh of gas – roughly 34 tankers of liquified natural gas (LNG). Importing those 34 tankers of LNG would have cost around £1.7bn, according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Spotlight
Tipping troubles
New research published this week shows how even small increases in global temperature, when combined with deforestation, could push the Amazon rainforest past a “tipping point”.
Crossing this threshold would trigger the gradual transition of vast swathes of the lush rainforest into dry savannah.
On the sidelines of the European Geosciences Uniongeneral assemblyin Vienna, Carbon Brief speaks to lead author Prof Nico Wunderlingfrom Goethe University Frankfurt and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Carbon Brief: Why does the Amazon rainforest have a tipping point?
Prof Nico Wunderling: All tipping elements have important feedback mechanisms that once a threshold – the tipping point – is crossed, kick in and a change in the system is self-amplified. For the Amazon rainforest, this important feedback mechanism is the atmospheric moisture recycling – meaning that the rainforest generates much of its own rainfall.
For eastern parts of the rainforest, moisture mostly comes from the Atlantic. The rainfall it receives then evaporates and is transported towards the west. And, just to give you a sense of how large this feedback can be, for parts of the rainforest, more than 50% of its rainfall is generated by the forest itself.
CB: How do global warming and deforestation both play a role in a potential tipping point?
NW: Both global warming and deforestation undermine this atmospheric moisture recycling. The direct way is deforestation – we cut down the forest, we lose major parts of the evapotranspiration, so you have less rainfall for the downwind forest. Also, global warming impacts the rainforest – it increases the number and intensity of droughts, which decreases the overall available rainfall and, therefore, can decrease the stability of the rainforest, which also leads to an undermining of the atmospheric moisture recycling.
Around 17% of the Amazon rainforest has already been lost. The critical threshold in our study is in the order of 22-28% of deforestation.
CB: Would such a transition be Amazon-wide? Or would it happen in pockets or regions?
NW: That actually depends on the other pressures that we expose the rainforest to. What we found is that, under climate change only [with no deforestation], the threshold kicks in at around 3.7-4C of warming. If that is crossed, then we find that around one-third of the Amazon rainforest is at risk of transitioning to a degraded ecosystem.
Then, if deforestation is also included [at 22-28%], this threshold comes down to well within the Paris Agreement limits – 1.5-1.9C of global warming. At the same time, the area at risk of transition increases from around one-third to around two-thirds to three-quarters.
CB: In your paper, you say that crossing a tipping point is “not inevitable” – can you elaborate?
NW: In a way, for the Amazon rainforest, we’re in a better situation than with other tipping elements, because we have multiple options for improving our situation. One is we can stop global warming – we can stop emitting and curb emissions before we reach the 2C target. That’s important for the Amazon rainforest. But crucial for the Amazon rainforest is that deforestation levels are halted below 22-28%.
And, indeed, current trends across the Amazon rainforest show that efforts to decrease deforestation are in place and they seem to work. If these trends continue, then I’m mildly optimistic that we will not reach 22-28%. But, if you would have asked me the same question five years ago, I might have said that, well, by mid-century, these values could be reached.
Watch, read, listen
AFRICA RENEWABLES: A CNBC Africa TV report examined the continent’s “renewables rise” and the “shift from climate policy to energy security”.
‘CLIMATE MONSTER’: New York Times writer David Wallace-Wells has a long read on the approach of “perhaps the most fearsome El Niño since before scientists even began modeling them”.
SANTA MARTA SUMMIT: For the Conversation, two political researchers lay out “four dynamics to watch” to determine whether the first conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia “becomes more than rhetoric”.
Coming up
- 8-9 May: Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders summit, Cebu, Philippines
- 10-14 May: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III second lead author meeting for the seventh assessment report, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- 11-12 May: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ministerial council meeting, Paris
- 11-15 May: 21st session of the UN forum on forests, New York
- 12 May: Bahamas election
Pick of the jobs
- Carbon Brief, journalism internship | Salary: £14.80 per hour (London Living Wage). Location: London/hybrid
- Secure Energy Project, campaign director | Salary: $50,000. Location: Brazil (remote)
- Commonwealth Secretariat, adviser on climate change | Salary: £80,672. Location: London
- Politico, deputy editor, Congress (energy and environmental policy) | Salary: Unknown. Location: Arlington, Virginia
DeBriefed is edited by Daisy Dunne. Please send any tips or feedback to debriefed@carbonbrief.org.
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The post DeBriefed 8 May 2026: EU eyes fossil-fuel exemptions | Wind and solar save UK ‘£1.7bn’ | Amazon ‘tipping point’ appeared first on Carbon Brief.
The board of the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) will decide on Thursday on whether to “provisionally set aside” $20 million for Nepal to deal with some of the effects of the climate-driven flood it suffered in August.
The motion, seen by Climate Home News, has been drafted by a group of board members from both developed and developing countries and so is likely to pass easily at the fund’s first-ever extraordinary board meeting on October 22.
It invites the government of Nepal to submit a proposal for how to use the money, with the board then deciding at one of its regular board meetings whether to approve the proposal or not.
While Nepali officials have described $20 million as merely “symbolic” in the face of the $4.8 billion estimated costs of recovery and reconstruction, it would be the first time the new FRLD – agreed in 2022 months after devastating floods in Pakistan – has set aside money for a specific disaster.
Until now the fund has only taken requests through a single call for proposals, launched at COP30 in Belém last November, that gave countries six months to submit requests.
Most of the 180 projects the FRLD is currently considering are designed to help countries avoid damage from future climate disasters, for example by strengthening responses to floods in Bangladesh and Lagos.
The draft decision says Nepal’s proposal will serve as a pilot for how funding requests can be submitted outside of the fund’s current timetable. That could let governments seek funds quickly after a climate disaster strikes, rather than waiting for the next call.
This arrangement would set the fund apart from other United Nations funds designed for climate adaptation or cutting emissions like the Green Climate Fund.
Climate campaigners from Fill the Fund said the draft decision is “a real step forward” as it is “the first time this Fund has moved to respond to a specific disaster”.
Too little, too late
The FRLD was agreed by governments at COP27, set up and operationalised at COP28 in 2023 but has yet to award any money. The 180 funding requests it is currently considering would cost around $2.8 billion, but it only has $350 million to allocate.
The United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has described the amount of money available in the fund as “ridiculously small” and Fill the Fund said $20 million “is a meaningful signal but it is a drop against an ocean of need”.
A glacial rock and ice collapse sent a torrent of water and debris through Nepal and the Chinese-administered region of Tibet on August 26. It killed more than 1,400 people, left thousands more missing and destroyed homes, bridges, roads and hydropower plants. Nepal’s finance and environment ministers quickly appealed to the FRLD board for funds, saying that “time is of the essence”.
Their call was followed swiftly by a letter from developing country FRLD board members urging the board’s co-chairs to organise an extraordinary meeting to allocate funds to Nepal.
But developed countries initially called for an informal consultation rather than a full board meeting. It took a further 45 days for the board’s co-chairs to organise an extraordinary board meeting for October 22 and to draft a motion for adoption.
Fill the Fund called for a permanent way of the fund rapid responding to disasters as “Nepal should not have required historic letters, an informal drafting group and the Fund’s first-ever extraordinary meeting simply to unlock an emergency response. The next country cannot wait two months and a bureaucratic marathon. Speed must be built in, not improvised.”
The post UN’s loss and damage fund set to give Nepal $20m for flood recovery appeared first on Climate Home News.
UN’s loss and damage fund set to give Nepal $20m for flood recovery
Some 58% of countries have met a UN call to submit new pledges on addressing nature loss – two years after the original deadline – according to Carbon Brief analysis.
Countries were asked to submit new pledges, known as national biodiversity strategies and action plans (NBSAPs), by the start of the COP16 biodiversity summit in October 2024.
After only 15% of nations met the original deadline, countries agreed at the summit to a new text that “urges” countries to release their NBSAPs “as soon as possible”.
Carbon Brief analysis shows that 113 countries have now come forward with new NBSAPs – up from 55 nations a year ago.
Countries will gather in Yerevan, Armenia, next week for COP17.
COP17 marks the halfway point of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF), a landmark agreement made in 2022 to reverse nature decline by 2030.
The summit will provide the stage for the first global review of countries’ progress towards meeting the targets of the GBF.
Global review
In Montreal, Canada, in 2022, nearly every country in the world agreed to the GBF. The overall “mission” of the framework is to “halt and reverse” biodiversity loss by 2030.
The GBF includes a list of 23 targets for 2030. They cover an expansive range of topics, including restoring ecosystems, addressing climate change and providing developing nations with finance to help cover the costs of protecting nature.
As part of the GBF and its underlying documents, countries agreed to a schedule for monitoring their progress towards achieving the 2030 targets.
This included the preparation of a “global report” of progress coordinated by the UN, which will inform a “global review” undertaken by countries at COP17.
The global report draws on countries’ NBSAPs and national targets. It also draws on countries’ seventh national reports, which were due to be submitted to the UN in February of this year.
Carbon Brief analysis shows that 113 out of 196 parties (58%) have now met the call to produce a new NBSAP – up from 55 nations just a year ago.
Since last year, many African nations have now published new NBSAPs.
African countries that have released new plans in the last year include: Algeria, Benin, Botswana, Cameroon, Comoros, Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Guinea, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Namibia, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
More South American nations have also published new NBSAPs. This includes Brazil – the world’s most biodiverse nation – as well as Belize and Chile.
COP17 host nation Armenia published its new NBSAP in April.
According to the GBF and its underlying documents, countries that were “not in a position” to meet the deadline to submit NBSAPs ahead of COP16 were requested to instead submit national targets.
Unlike NBSAPs, national targets simply list biodiversity goals that countries will aim for, without an accompanying plan for how they will be achieved.
Four of the world’s megadiverse nations – countries that account for the majority of Earth’s species – have not yet published new NBSAPs. These countries are Papua New Guinea, Peru, South Africa and the US.
The US is the only UN member country that is not a signatory to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
The country with the most land on Earth, Russia, has also not produced a new NBSAP.
By the end of COP16, some 119 parties had produced at least one national target. Two years later, this figure has risen to 175, or 89% of countries.
In addition, around half of countries met the deadline to produce their seventh national reports by February of this year. This figure has now risen to 73% of countries.
Over the past two years, many developing countries have expressed concerns that a lack of available funding has prevented them from publishing their NBSAPs.
A spokesperson for the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the multilateral fund that provides funding to help with the preparation of NBSAPs, told Carbon Brief in 2025 that 120 out of 139 countries that had requested financial support since COP16 had been able to access it.
The spokesperson added that the UN Environment Programme was “working to resolve outstanding issues” to allow the remaining 19 countries to access financial assistance.
